Friday, August 1, 2014

We reported in March 2014 about the Canadian physician who snooped on female patients not under his care. The Canadian privacy commissioner, Anne Bertrand, has now released her preliminary report.

The report details that Dr. Fernando Rojas, a radio-oncologist, inappropriately accessed the files of 141 women a total of 350 times. The commissioner has made five recommendations, including that the medical center, where Rojas works, press charges under the Provincial Offenses Procedures Act.

"he was looking at these patient files out of personal interest and to find out their age." - Anne Bertrand, Privacy Commissioner, Canada

The breaches occurred over a period of twenty eight months. The report also recommends random audits of access to electronic patient records be more frequent and to quickly limit or restrict access to patient records when any suspicious activities are found. Healthcare organizations can audit all access, not just random samples, by utilizing low-cost on-demand SaaS analytics services.

Download a white paper on patient privacy breach detection. Learn how to proactively identify unauthorized breaches of patient data privacy, even by authorized users - with no hardware and no on-site software.